Yikes!...that's another can of worms. I'm going to leave that alone for now.

However, I will agree that gays will lose rights/freedoms in the situation that I described. They are making a choice to pursue this equal footing, so I am assuming that they know what they will be getting and losing. In writing my response, I began to realize that some of those protections are not necessarily to protect them, rather to protect the government.

In the end, it still comes back to the core reason that I am in the middle of this dialog. Gay couples are asking to be treated the same as hetero couples. They are asking to take on all the pros and cons of government-recognized marital agreements. I am arguing on their behalf solely because I believe that our government has no right to discriminate on individual societal groups, because it is here to protect and serve all of equally.